How to kick-start your CELPIP Practice Habit

Speaker A: 00:00:00

Building a new habit can be really hard. Like really hard, even when you know you need it.

Like when it comes to exercise or eating healthily, you know you need to do it, but it just feels so hard to make those behaviors a part of your life. I've been battling with one of those I need to add this to my life, but I can't seem to make it happen kind of habits. Ha.

In fact, I've got several of them. The two top ones stretching and writing. Now, those are drastically different habits, aren't they? And I agree they are different in important ways.

One of those habits is coming from my physiotherapist. The other is one that I really want to do for myself. Can you guess which one is which? Yep.

Stretching exercises have been assigned to me by my physiotherapist to help me battle my ongoing chronic back pain. The other the writing comes from within me.

I've shared here before that I've been working on a novel for the past or, oh, probably eight or so years, and I want to finish it by the time I turn 50, which is now just a few short months away. But I've been struggling to build writing and stretching into my life, even though I want the results that those habits are going to give me.

But you know something, my friend?

I stumbled on something that's actually working and I wanted to share it with you because I know how hard it can be to make celpip and English practice into a habit in your own life. Like my stretching. Your celpip prep might be something that you have to do in order to get your pr, for example.

But even though you know you have to do it, you still find yourself struggling to make time for that practice. Or maybe your English skills are just something that you want to be improving. The desire to get better comes from inside of you.

It's not being forced on you. It's not something that you have to do in order to live here in the country. You just want to do it.

Maybe it's something that you've always wanted to master but just haven't been able to make it happen.

Regardless of where you are today, whether you're struggling to make time to practice in a busy day overpack schedule, but it's something that you have to do in order to gain your PR status.

Or if it's something that you want to do, it's coming from inside of you that you just want to get better at your English skills for no other reason other than you just want to get better, then I think that today's episode is going to help you to take some steps forward. Hi, I'm Aaron. Welcome to the CELPIP Success Podcast.

This is the podcast where motivated English learners just like you learn how to speak English fearlessly and learn practical tips and strategies to conquer the CELPIP exam. Like I said before, I've been going to the physiotherapist now for the past three or four months.

Intense pain on a daily basis was what drove me to go. It motivated me to seek help and the treatments that I got there did provide some momentary relief.

But I knew because this was not my first time working with a physiotherapist, that hands on treatment was not all that they were going to do for me. They would also give me homework to do. Stretching.

My physiotherapist is so good at consistently encouraging me to do the stretches that will help me fight my chronic back pain that I've been telling you about. But it's weird.

Even though I know those stretches help, and even though I know I need to be doing them, it's been super tough for me to be consistent.

I've struggled with making time to do them each day and for the first few months of treatment, I have to confess to you that I rarely did them at all. At least for sure, not on a daily basis. But my physiotherapist is smart. He didn't give up on me.

He kept checking in with me on how my stretching was going with each visit I had with him. He always made a point to praise me for the ones I have been doing, but gently challenged me to be adding just one more to what I was trying to do.

Not all of them at once, just one more. I've got a total of eight stretches that I've been learning how to do and I've been able to do frequently three of them.

But all eight exercises would likely take about 30 minutes of my time. But the physio has been challenging me to aim for just 10. 10 minutes to start. Not 30, just 10. A week or two ago, he did something else.

He directed me to their special app. Now I have to confess something to you again.

I'm pretty sure that he introduced me to that app right at the beginning of my treatment a few months ago, but I didn't pay attention to it until a few weeks ago, that is. And my friend, this little app has been a game changer for me. When I launched it, it immediately asked me if I wanted to set an exercise reminder.

Yes, actually, yes I do want to set a reminder. Not remembering to do my exercises was one of my top obstacles. I'd simply forget. So I set up my reminder now.

Daily at 7pm, a little alarm will ping on my phone reminding me that I need to do my stretches. And actually, at 7pm every day, you'll find me on the floor twisting myself into shapes that look pretty weird but sure have been helping.

All thanks to that 7pm alarm.

And right there was a secret sauce for me to get into the daily habit of stretching an alarm plus a simple task that the app shows me to do and a way to track it after every exercise. I click Done and it marks it for me as done on my weekly calendar.

I started this a few Saturdays ago and I haven't missed a day since, which is massive progress for me. Before this little tool, my exercise would be irregular at best if it happened at all.

An alarm plus a simple task to do plus tracking made all the difference for me. Now maybe you're wondering what does this mean for me and my CELPIP prep? Well, hang in there. I'm going to try to explain it right now.

If you're struggling to make time to practice for the celpip, I want to encourage you to try this out for yourself. Grab your cell phone, set a repeating reminder on it every day at X o' clock and by X o' clock you fill in the time that works best for you.

I will record one speaking task response. Put that as an alarm inside of your cell phone. Or how about this one? Every day at X o'. Clock.

And like I said before, X o' clock is the time that works best for you. I will read one news article on CBC and practice taking notes about it. Decide how long your practice session will be. Start small.

Even two minutes counts to help you get started. As you put in your reps, you can slowly start to build your practice time up.

As you establish yourself a practice habit, make sure you also have a way to track it. Try putting a check mark on your calendar for each day you do your practice session.

Just seeing multiple days stacking up behind you where you did your practice time can be enough to keep your streak going. See if you can get five days in a row and then take the weekend off. You earned it. And that two minute reference I made a moment ago?

That's important too. And it's what I need to dive back into in order to get my writing habit back on track. It comes from author James Clear and his book Atomic Habits.

He argues in his book that the best way to get a habit started in your life is to make it as simple and easy to start as possible, even if it's just for two minutes. The point is to get started and become the person who practices or exercises or writes or whatever you're trying to do.

Before you try to increase the duration or intensity of your practice, be the person who does it. A month or so ago, a client and I decided to take the two minute challenge together.

I picked my writing, they picked going to bed at a certain time every day. Here's what's cool. It actually worked for both of us. I created a writing streak by writing just two minutes a day.

And my client was also able to go to bed at the time that they had set every day. Now, I'm going to be honest with you and say that unfortunately I broke my writing streak a week or so ago and I haven't gotten back into it.

But that's something else that James Clear writes about. If you fall off your habit quickly, get back up and pick up where you left off. You're not starting all the way back at zero.

Just pick up your habit and start going again. So today, that's what I'll be doing after my stretching session.

You're going to find me sitting in my chair with my notebook with my pen, writing just for two minutes. Now, how about you? How are you going to put these ideas to work with your CELPIP prep? Thank you so much for listening to today's episode.

I hope you'll come back again in two weeks for the next episode of the CELPIP Success podcast. Have a great day.